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=====5.2.11.4. Descriptions of the Mind=====
=====5.2.11.4. Descriptions of the Mind=====
<pre>
In the process of interpreting Aristotle's text on interpretation as an early account of sign relations, I invoked a number of distinctions that appeared to be called for to guide the interpretation of the text and to form what I sense to be the most reasonable interpretation of its terms. All of these distinctions are drawn from common practice and are usually assumed to be easy to make in any case. And yet, on reflection, I find that I have little or no faith in their advertised properties or in my right to take them for granted.
For instance, consider the distinction between form and matter. When I reflect on the question of how and whether I can make this distinction, I find myself hard pressed to tell whether the distinction itself is a formal distinction, a material distinction, or something else entirely. Trying to pin it down between the first two cases, it seems to be either, or both, and yet neither, depending on the light that I choose to throw on the question, to consider the alternatives by, and to interrogate the usual answers under. If it is either, then the significance of the other is diminished to nothing, as all that the opposite side of the divide can amount to is sliced away by a gradual slippage down the apposite slope, until the significance of the entire distinction appears but to disappear. If it is both, then it violates the exclusiveness that is usually assumed to hold between the two sides of the distinction. If it is neither, then it invalidates the exhaustiveness that is usually assumed to apply to the distinction between form and matter. Whatever the case, I am called on to assume something unusual. Indeed, it seems I am forced to recognize a "tertium quid" or a "third something", in other words, an option that can supply a novel alternative to the choice between form and matter, a category that the Greeks only hint at obscurely or obliquely allude to under the name of an "entelechy", and something that I can well nigh call the "interpretive" case.
By way of guidance in this innovation, or this novel effort to capture interpretation in and of itself, I adduce two texts that help to show the way that the relationship between form and matter has often been seen.
The first text illustrates the use of this distinction in the context of a psychological investigation.
We describe one class of existing things as substance (ousia); and this we subdivide into three: (1) matter (hyle), which in itself is not an individual thing; (2) shape (morphe) or form (eidos), in virtue of which individuality is directly attributed; and (3) the compound of the two.
Matter is potentiality (dynamis), while form is realization or actuality (entelecheia), and the word actuality is used in two senses, illustrated by the possession of knowledge (episteme) and the exercise of it (theorein).
Bodies seem to be pre eminently substances, and most particularly those which are of natural origin; for these are the sources from which the rest are derived.
But of natural bodies some have life and some have not; by life we mean the capacity for self sustenance, growth, and decay. Every natural body, then, which possesses life must be substance, and substance of the compound type.
But since it is a body of a definite kind, viz., having life, the body cannot be soul, for the body is not something predicated of a subject, but rather is itself to be regarded as a subject, i.e., as matter.
So the soul (psyche) must be substance (ousia) in the sense of being the form (eidos) of a natural body (soma), which potentially (dynamei) has life. And substance in this sense is actuality (entelecheia).
Aristotle, De Anima, II.i.412a6-412a22
The soul, then, is the actuality of the kind of body we have just described. But actuality has two senses, analogous to the possession of knowledge and the exercise of it.
Clearly actuality in our present sense is analogous to the possession of knowledge; for both sleep and waking depend upon the presence of soul, and waking is analogous to the exercise of knowledge, sleep to its possession but not its exercise.
Now in one and the same person the possession of knowledge comes first. The soul may therefore be defined as the first actuality of a natural body potentially possessing life; ...
So one need no more ask whether body and soul are one than whether the wax and the impression it receives are one, or in general whether the matter of each thing is the same as that of which it is the matter; for admitting that the terms unity and being are used in many senses, the paramount sense is that of actuality.
We have, then, given a general definition of what the soul is: it is substance in the sense of a formula; i.e., the essence of such and such a body [a natural body potentially possessing life].
Suppose that an implement, e.g., an axe, were a natural body; the substance of the axe would be that which makes it an axe, and this would be its soul; suppose this removed, and it would no longer be an axe, except equivocally. ...
If the eye were a living creature, its soul would be its vision; for this is the substance in the sense of formula of the eye. But the eye is the matter of vision, and if vision fails there is no eye, except in an equivocal sense, as for instance a stone or painted eye. ...
The waking state is actuality in the same sense as the cutting of the axe or the seeing of the eye, while the soul is actuality in the same sense as the faculty of the eye for seeing, or of the implement for doing its work. ...
It is also uncertain whether the soul as an actuality bears the same relation to the body as the sailor to the ship.
Aristotle, De Anima, II.i.412a22-413a9
The second text illustrates the use of an analogous distinction between form and matter within the context of a logical investigation.
And how can one know the certainty of demonstrations except by examining the argument in detail, the form and the matter, in order to see if the form is good, and then if each premiss is either admitted or proved by another argument of like force, until one is able to make do with admitted premisses alone?
Leibniz, Theodicy, [Leib, 89]
Take once again the distinction between form and matter, and allow me to say that this distinction is "interpretive" in character or nature. This gives me the option of saying that it is formal in some cases but material in other cases. It can all depend on choice and circumstance. If I interpret it as formal then certain things follow. If I interpret it as material then other things follow. But I can rest with calling it interpretive, leaving it to the moment to actualize what is most fitting. If I interpret it as interpretive, which amounts to a way of holding any further decision in suspense, then I am choosing to remain all the while constantly aware of the circumstances and the conditions that affect the actualization of this distinction as either form or matter, or else to experience the consequences of failing to do so.
But then, on marking any distinction, a moment's reflection brings me to ask: "Who or what makes this distinction that I mark?" And whether I say that it is I, or you, or whoever else agrees in marking it with us, whose activity constitutes the making of this distinction, or whether I think it is someone other or something else that makes this distinction that all of us merely mark and remark, and whether it is decided in the end that the maker is always coincident or sometimes distinct in regard to the marker, then I find myself still having to ask: "How and why is this distinction being marked, in particular, what side or sides, with respect to each other, are its maker and its marker on?
For these reasons, it is necessary to use an indirect strategy in order to approach the questions of these distinctions that I want to consider. The ostensible distinctions are first described in very rough terms and introduced in the ways that they are naturally and usually thought of. Thus, without taking for granted the clarity, fidelity, sensibility, or validity of their formulations, the distinctions are initially presented in the terms by which they are commonly indicated, intended, suggested, or regarded as being established. This manner of approach is demanded in order to keep from assuming, if at all possible, the prior worth of the very formulations that are being examined and tested, and it tries to make it a separate question whether these intentions to distinguish can continue to be maintained in the very same terms and formulations. Once this preliminary investigation is carried through to a conclusion, positive or negative, I can then return to analyze more carefullly and more generally the whole process of making such distinctions.
1. The rough idea of one distinction is to sort the properties of things into two categories: the "properties that things have" versus the "properties that things are given". More specifically, and in reference to a "typical" agent, the former class is intended to include the properties that things have, in and of themselves, independently of any agent, whereas the latter class is intended to include the properties that things are given by an agent. Now, it is clear that the common usage of words like "have" and "give" leaves a wide range of ambiguity yet remaining that needs to be resolved by the right interpretation. (essential vs imputed prop)
2. The rough idea of another distinction is to sort signs and ideas, no matter whether they are considered severally or together, into two categories: "signs and ideas as they actually occur" versus "signs and ideas in an abstract vacuum". More specifically, and with reference to a particular class, community, or population of interpretive agents, the former category is intended to include signs and ideas as they actually occur among these agents, for example, as actualized, embodied, implemented, operationalized, or realized, whether consciously or not, among human beings, whereas the latter category leaves unanswered the question of embodiment and is therefore open to any suggestion as to how these signs and these ideas are intended to be conceived. (empirical and material vs theoretical and formal signs and ideas)
The form of distinction that I need at this point tagging "signs and ideas as they actually occur", for instance, as actualized, embodied, and realized, whether consciously or not, in human beings, and leaving "signs and ideas in a vacuum" untagged by any special mark.
Suppose I need to draw a distinction, that marks out a special dominion from its more general domain, but I want to be careful to emphasize the inclusion of the species within the genus, as much as their separation. So let me paint the distinction this way, that it overlays a distinctive tincture on the species but not on the genus, and thus it highlights the special dominion as it resides within the grounds of its generic domain. Given this special form of distinction, it deserves to be given a name. It is fitting to describe it as a "partial functional distinction" (PFD), by way of recognizing the partial function that assigns a special value to the species, but not necessarily any value to the rest of the genus. A better nickname, more compact than the verbose description and more mnemonic than the acronym, is served by coining the term "distincture". In this context, let the species that is distinguished by a particular distincture be referred to as the "content" of that distincture, and let the remains of the genus be referred to as the "discontent" or even as the "distent" of that distincture. Notice that a distinction, as it is ordinarily understood, has at least two distinctures associated with it, where each especially values what the other does not necessarily value, and where the content of either one is the discontent of the other one. It should also be noted that I have not said anything yet about these partial functions being computable, only that they are conceivable.
I use the terms "figure", "ground", and ? to indicate the "species", the "remains", and the "genus", respectively, of a PFD or "distincture". Notice that the "figure" and the "ground" are not treated symmetrically, but that each element of the figure is given an extra feature, a mark of attention or a tincture of distinction, that it does not have before the distinction is made, even if it is nothing more than a recognition or a representation, explicitly given by an agent to an element, of a feature that the element already posseses. Notice the asymmetry that occurs between the treatment of the figure and the treatment of the ground. Given this special form of distinction, and appreciating this asymmetry, ...
There are several ways of studying sign relations that avoid the realm of affects and motives, at least, they seem to get around it for a while, thereby obviating the problems of delving into this refractory material. A purely combinatorial approach ...
It seems to me that every "impression" has something in the way of an "impulse" about it, in other words, that every affective condition is analogous, equivalent, or identical in some sense to a motive disposition. For this reason, I comprehend the category of pathemata to comprise a generic class of "double duty ideas" that one is free to interpret in either a passive or an active sense, in short, as "affects" or "motives", respectively. To sum up the understanding of these terms that I reach at this point: The category of pathemata, encompassing both affective impressions and motive impulses, can be treated as a species of ideas. Ideas constitute a genus of mental conditions, dispositions, or entities that are theoretically tantamount to "mental signs". Whereas ideas can be understood as "signs in the mind", it is perhaps best to regard them as "signs of the mind", or even as "the mind in signs", that is, as all the ways that the mind conducts itself and continues to live in signs.
Affects and motives, by way of giving them a conventional placement in the larger class of ideas that inhabit the "mind" of a particular agent, can be seen as belonging somewhat closer to the "body" of their agent, since they are especially concerned with maintaining the health and the life of that body, and they preserve an interest in the viability, the vitality, and the overall well being of the particular agent concerned. Accordingly, whatever else the signs called "pathemata" are about, they are partly about the body of functions and structures that are required to maintain their agent in a viable form. No matter what other objects their signals of conditions and their suggestions of actions may have, they are partially intended to serve a particular form of materially constituted agent and to help it preserve its own accustomed nature.
To form a better sense of how affects and motives fit within the category of ideas, or mental signs, and of how they can be located within a suitable domain of interpretant signs, I give these pathemata the somewhat arbitrary collective name of "motives or themes" (MOT's), intended to suggest little more than the common coin of emotions and motivations, and then I quickly divide this overly bulky, burdensome, and burgeoning class of meanings into three subdomains:
1. The "ostensibly ultimate interpretants" (OUI's) comprise whatever aspects of affirmative and definite sense are available to these MOT's. They constitute the ultimate meanings that appear to be achievable and affirmable at a given moment in the development of an interpreter or in the evolution of an interpretation. At any given time, they seem to be the ultimate interpretants that all properly directed mental processes are tending toward, and yet none of this stands in the way of diverse interpretants being taken as the ultimate achievables at other times.
2. The "almost never objective notions" (ANON's)
3. The "never objective notions" (NON's)
Talk of mental impressions, whether taken literally, as being the forms that objects are imagined to impress on the mind, or taken figuratively, as bearing the information that objects are recognized to transfer into the medium afforded by the mind, is frequently criticized as a metaphor that leads to many false, misleading, specious, or spurious impressions. For instance, the very idea of a mental impression is often censured on the grounds that it promotes an offshoot of illegitimate "instructivist" notions, themselves the outgrowth of commonly discredited "essentialist" doctrines, teaching something to the effect that objects have the power to "instruct" the mind about their essential natures or true properties, thereby directly, literally, and materially imbuing, informing, infusing, and "instructuring" the mind, not just "about" their actual characters, but fully "in" their ideal forms and wholly "with" their real natures.
Obviously, construing the word "impression" in this strict a fashion, hobbling it to senses that remain as naively literal as they favor the purely material, is bound to raise a welter of absurdities in the mind. The notion that an object itself can provide instruction in its nature is not invidious in itself. It is only the refractory implication that often accompanies it, the uncritical, unexamined, and unreflective assumption that this degree of directness affords a quality of infallibility to what nature teaches, insofar as its lessons can be imparted to the finite mind. Regarded in this light, the fallacies imputed to "essentialist" doctrines and "instructivist" notions are not essential to the elements of validity that a charitable interpretation could find in them, but only variations on the same old theme, the pervasive illusion that any mode of infallible cognition is available to a finite mind.
What can be said about this fundamental fallacy, to wit, the presumption of infallibility that so persistently appears to affect the minds of the very agents who least deserve to claim its prerogative with any justice, that so frequently appears to remain as incorrigible as it is devoted to preserve its unregenerate state? If one inquires into the origin of this delusion and into the source of its effects on the mind, then the issue can be divided into two branches, distinguishing the mechanisms of its operation from the motives of its enterprise, the "how" from the "why". When it comes to the mechanisms that are capable of accomplishing the effects of this illusion, it seems to be through the creations of the imagination and the ingenuities of speculative thought, in short, through the inventions of "wishful thinking" that it manages to maintain itself. When it comes to the motives that can be held responsible for mounting the measures of effort that the work on this web of deception requires, they seems to harbor their most fugitive aspiration in the overwhelming need to find some perfection somewhere. This is tantamount to a desire or a disposition, affecting the conduct of agent who falls subject to it, that expects a promise of perfect certainty at some point or other, and thus insists on placing a measure of absolute trust in a point of dogma or a rule of method.
Wherever there is an prevailing need to believe that one already knows, to think with respect to a question that the answer is already found, then there will be no genuine inquiry occurring in that direction.
If it pertinent to characterize the kind of agent that behaves this way, it is almost as if the agent imagines that it cannot actually be, neither begin to act, nor continue to act, without such a guarantee of certainty. But what kind of surety would that be, but another specious certificate? Perhaps this character of conduct is due to an excessive sensitivity to the "irritation of doubt" or an exaggerated intolerance for existing in a state of uncertainty. But no amount of finite intuition can purchase an instruction so authoritative that it can ever be interpreted as infallible. In summary, if "essentialism" and its oftentime corollary "instructivism" are interpreted perversely, that is, taking at face value the excessively literal images and the extremely material senses that their underlying thematic metaphors are able to bring to mind, then they are definitely capable of leading to ridiculous conclusions, but if they are interpreted in figurative and formal manners, then there may be a sufficient amount of interpretive "elbow room" for them to convey a measure of sense.
In this work I intend to give a liberal interpretation to the issue of what kinds of "forms" are able to "impress" their "shapes" on the mind. I consider it likely that they can take the forms, among other things, of probability distributions, in other words, patterns of amplitude, density, frequency, intensity, or likely value that can be predicated of events in the world or impressions in the mind with equal felicity. If these forms are still too concretely cast, then still more formal forms are available. Abstracting from the contents of a strictly probabilistic interpretation, one is left with functions from domains of elementary events articulated in the world or existential experiences affecting the mind, respectively, to ranges of a common value, the height of which has the sole utility of indicating to different degrees the diverse elements under its dominion. In the resulting spaces of functions, forms of dispensation or patterns of distribution accumulate over the domains of external events and the domains of internal experiences, respectively, like crowns of foliage above the branches of the corresponding trees. It is trees like these, nothing more literal, that provides the material for mental impressions. In summary, the medium of functional forms is able to furnish a common ground for the exchange of information between events and experiences and to supply a mode of comparison that connects any domain of objects with any domain of ideas.
Granted the liberality of this interpretation, and given the looseness of this resulting constructions, while recognizing the general fallibility of all the mind's affections and impressions, and also remembering that the essences of some substantial objects are formal, relational, or structural rather than absolute, literal, or material, the force of common objections to "essential instructions" is blunted or diffused on these points, that is, the potential charges of essentialist and instructivist fallacies become defused in their application to these forms of distributed interpretation.
Given that reasonable interpretations are available for the language of mental impressions, that serve to make talk about mental impressions at least potentially sensible, then what explains the very real problems that nevertheless continue to arise from this usage? As far as I can detect, the real problem with the supposition of an "instructive" mechanism of transfer is a steady bias, arising especially in certain corners of the modern scene, toward "material" rather than "formal" interpretations of the "forms", the "patterns", or the "shapes" that are taken as being impressed on the mind.
</pre>
=====5.2.11.5. Of Signs and the Mind=====
=====5.2.11.5. Of Signs and the Mind=====
